The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss Part 8

_Feb. 13th._--Mother is going to Boston with sister on Sat.u.r.day, provided I am well enough (which I mean to be), as Mrs. Willis has expressed a strong wish to see her once more. We heard from them yesterday again. Poor Ellen's coffin was placed just where she stood as a bride, less than eight months ago, and her little infant rested on her breast. There is rarely a death so universally mourned as hers; she was the most winning and attractive young creature I ever saw.

_Feb. 21st._--Are you in earnest? Are you in earnest? Are you really coming home in March? I am afraid to believe, afraid to doubt it. I am crying and laughing and writing all at once. You would not tell me so unless you _really were coming_, I know ... And you are coming home!

(How madly my heart is beating! lie still, will you?) I almost feel that you are here and that you look over my shoulder and read while I write.

Are you sure that you will come? Oh, don't repent and send me another letter to say that you will wait till it is pleasanter weather; it is pleasant now. I walked out this morning, and the air was a spring air, and gentlemen go through the streets with their cloaks hanging over their arms, and there is a constant plas.h.i.+ng against the windows, of water dripping down from the melting snow; yes, I verily believe that it is warm, and that the birds will sing soon--I do, upon my word ...

I wouldn't have the doctor come and feel my pulse this afternoon for anything. He would prescribe fever powders or fever drops, or something of the sort, and bleed me and send me to bed, or to the insane hospital; I don't know which. I could cry, sing, dance, laugh, all at once. Oh, that I knew exactly when you will be here--the day, the hour, the minute, that I might know to just what point to govern my impatient heart--for it would be a pity to punish the poor little thing too severely. I have been reading to-day something which delighted me very much; do you remember a little poem of Goethe's, in which an imprisoned count sings about the flower he loves best, and the rose, the lily, the pink, and the violet, each in turn fancy themselves the objects of his love. [5] You see I put you in the place of the prisoner at the outset, and I was to be the flower of his love, whatever it might be. Well, it was the "Forget-me-not." If there were a flower called the "Always-loving," maybe I might find out to what order and cla.s.s I belong. Dear me; there's the old clock striking twelve, and I verily meant to go to bed at ten, so as to sleep away as much of the time as possible before your coming, but I fell into a fit of loving meditation, and forgot everything else. You should have seen me pour out tea to-night! Why, the first thing I knew, I had poured it all out into my own cup till it ran over, and half filled the waiter, which is the first time I ever did such a ridiculous thing in my life. But, dearest, I bid you good night, praying you may have sweet dreams and an inward prompting to write me a long, long, blessed letter, such as shall make me dance about the house and sing.

_Feb. 22d._--Oh, I am frightened at myself, I am so happy! It seems as if even this whole folio would not in the least convey to you the gladness with which my heart is dancing and singing and making merry.

The doctor seems quite satisfied with my shoulder, and says "_it's first-rate;_" so set your heart at rest on that point. I hope there'll be n.o.body within two miles of our meeting. Suppose you stop in some out of the way place just out of town, and let me trot out there to see you?

Oh, are you really coming?

_To G, E. S. March 4, 1844._

I must write a few lines to tell you, my dear cousin, that I am thinking of and praying for you on your birthday. I have but one request to offer either for you or for myself, and that is for more love to our Redeemer.

I bless G.o.d that I have no other want.... I do not know why it is, but I never have thought so much of death and of the certainty that I, sooner or later, must die, as within a few months past. I am not exactly superst.i.tious, but this daily and hourly half-presentiment that my life will not be a long one, is singularly subduing, and seems to lay a restraining hand upon future plans. I am not sorry, whatever may be the event, that it is so. I dread clinging to this world and seeking my rest in it. I am not afraid to die, or afraid that anything I love may be taken from me; I only have this serious and thoughtful sense of death upon my mind. You know how we have loved the Willis family, and can imagine how we felt the death of their youngest daughter, who was dear to everybody. And Mrs. Willis is, probably, not living. This has added to my previous feeling on the subject, which was, perhaps, first occasioned by the sudden and terrible loss of my poor friend, Mr.

Thatcher, a year ago this month. [6] G.o.d forbid I should ever forget the lessons He saw I needed, and dare to feel that there is a thing upon earth which death may not touch. Oh, in how many ways He has sought to win my whole heart for His own!

_March 22d._--I was interrupted last night by the arrival of G. L. P., after his four months' absence in Mississippi, improved in health, and in looks, and in spirits, and quite as glad to see me, I believe, as even you, in your goodness of heart, say my lover ought to be. But I will tell you the truth, my dear cousin, I am _afraid_ of love. There is no other medium, save that of the happiness of loving and being loved, by which my affections could be effectually turned from divine to earthly things. Am I not then on dangerous ground? Yet G.o.d mercifully shows me that it is so, and when I think how He has saved me hitherto through sharp temptations, it seems wicked, distrust of Him, not to feel that He will save me through those to come. I know now there are some of the great lessons of life yet to be learned; I believe I must _suffer_ as long as I have an earthly existence. Will not then G.o.d make that suffering but as a blessed reprover to bring me nearer Himself? I hope so.

During the winter her health had become so much impaired, that great anxiety was felt as to the issue. In a letter to her friend, Miss Ellen Thurston, dated April 20, 1844, she writes:

You remember, perhaps, that on the afternoon you were so good as to come and spend with me, I was making a fuss about a little thing on my shoulder. Well, I had at last to have it removed, and though the operation was not in itself very painful, its effects on my whole nervous system have been most powerful. I have lost all regular habits of sleep--for a week I do not know that I slept two hours--and am ready to fly into a fit at the bare thought of sitting still long enough to write a common letter. I have, however, the consolation of being pitied and consoled with, as there's something in the idea of cutting at the flesh which touches the heart, a thousand times more than some severer sufferings would do. I am getting quite thin and weak upon it, and I believe mother firmly expects me to shrink into nothing, though I am a pretty bouncing girl still.

Owing to some mishap the healing process was entirely thwarted, and after a very trying summer, the operation had to be repeated. This time it was performed by that eminent surgeon and admirable Christian man, Dr. John C. Warren of Boston, a.s.sisted by his son, Dr. J. M. W. Dr.

Warren told Miss Payson's friend, who had accompanied an invalid sister to New York, that he thought it would require "about five minutes;" but it proved to be much more serious than he had antic.i.p.ated. Miss Willis, in her letter from Geneva already quoted, thus refers to it:

My next meeting with Lizzy revealed a striking trait of her character, which hitherto I had had no opportunity of observing--her wonderful fort.i.tude under suffering. I was at the seash.o.r.e with my sister and family when, her little child being taken suddenly very ill in the night, I went up to Boston by an early train to bring down as soon as possible our family physician. On arriving at his house I was disappointed at being told that he could not come at once, being engaged to perform an operation that morning. While waiting for the return train, I called at my father's office and was surprised to hear that Lizzy was the patient. A painful tumor had developed itself on the back of her neck, and she had come up with her mother to Boston to consult Dr. Warren, who had advised its immediate removal.

I went at once to see her. She greeted me with even more than her usual warmth and after stating in a few words the object of her coming to Boston and that she was expecting the doctors every moment, she added: "You will stay with me, I am sure. Mother insists on being present, but she can not bear it. She will be sure to faint. If you will promise to stay, I can persuade her to remain in the next room." Seeing the distress in my face at the request, she said, "I will be very good. You will have nothing to do but sit in the room, to satisfy mother." It was impossible to refuse and I remained. There was no chloroform then to give blessed unconsciousness of suffering and every pang had to be endured, but she more than kept her promise to "be good." Not a sound or a movement betrayed suffering. She spoke only once. After the knife was laid aside and the threaded needle was pa.s.sed through the quivering flesh to draw the gaping edges of the wound together, she asked, after the first st.i.tch had been completed, in a low, almost calm tone, with only a slight tremulousness, how many more were to be taken. When the operation was over, and the surgeons were preparing to depart, she questioned them minutely as to the mark which would be left after healing. I was surprised that she could think of it at such a moment, knowing how little value she had always set on her personal appearance, but her mother explained it afterward by referring to her betrothal to you, and the fear that you would find the scar disfiguring. [7]

In a letter to Mrs. Stearns, [8] she herself writes, Sept. 6:

I had no idea of the suffering which awaited me. I thought I should get off as I did the first time. But I have a great deal to be thankful for.

On Wednesday, to my infinite surprise and gladness, George pounced down upon me from New York, having been quite cut to the heart by the account mother gave him. Everybody is so kind, and I have had so many letters, and seen so many sympathising faces, and "dear Lizzy" sounds so sweet to my insatiable ears; and yet--and yet--I would rather die than live through the forty-eight hours again which began on Monday morning.

Somebody must have prayed for me, or I never should have got through.

An extract from another of her letters, dated Portland, September 11th, belongs here:

I must tell you, too, about Dr. Warren (the old one). When mother asked him concerning the amount he was to receive from her for his professional services, he smiled and said: "I shall not charge _you_ much, and as for Miss Payson, when she is married and rich, she may pay me and welcome--but not till then." I told him I never expected to be rich, and he replied, with what mother thought an air of contentment that said he knew all about it: "Well, we can be happy without riches,"

and such a good, happy smile shone all over his face as I have seldom been so fortunate as to see in an old man. As for the young one, he seemed as glad when I was dressed on Sunday with a clean frock and no shawl, as if it were really a matter of consequence to him to see his patients looking comfortable and well. I am getting along finely; there is only one spot on my shoulder which is troublesome, and they ordered me on a very strict diet for that--so I am half-starved this blessed minute. We went to Newburyport on Monday, and stayed there with Anna till yesterday afternoon. I think the motion of the cars hurt me somewhat, but by the time you get here I do hope I shall be quite well.

_Evening_.-- ... I have had such happy thoughts and prayers to-night!

You should certainly have knelt with me in my little room, where, for the first time a year ago this evening, I asked G.o.d to bless _us_; and you too, perhaps, then began first to pray for me. Oh, what a wonderful time it was!... I hope you have prayed for me to-day--I don't mean as you always do, but with new prayers wherewith to begin the new year. G.o.d bless you and love you!

But this period was also one of large mental growth. It was marked especially by two events that had a shaping influence upon both her intellectual and religious character. One was the study of German. She was acquainted already with French and Italian; she now devoted her leisure hours to the language and works of Schiller and Goethe. These opened to her a new world of thought and beauty. Her correspondence contains frequent allusions to the progress of her German reading. Here is one in a letter to her cousin:

I have read George Herbert a good deal this winter. I have also read several of Schiller's plays--William Tell and Don Carlos among the rest--and got a great deal more excited over them than I have over anything for a long while. George has a large German library, but I don't suppose I shall be much the wiser for it, unless I turn to studying theology. Did you read in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the "Bekenntnisse einer schonen Seele"? I do think it did my soul good when I read it last July. The account she gives of her religious history reminded me of mine in some points very strongly.

The other incident was her introduction to the writings of Fenelon--an author whom, in later years, she came to regard as an oracle of spiritual wisdom. In the letter just quoted, she writes: "I am reading Fenelon's 'Maximes des Saints,' and many of his ideas please me exceedingly. Some of his 'Lettres Spirituelles' are delicious--so heavenly, so child-like in their spirit." [9]

[1] _Jan, 1, 1845._--I used never to confide my religious feelings to any one in the world. I went on my toilsome, comfortless way quite by myself. But when at the end of this long, gloomy way, I saw and knew and rejoiced in Christ, then I forgot myself and my pride and my reserve, and was glad if a little child would hear me say "I love Him!"--glad if the most ignorant, the most hitherto despised, would speak of Him.

[2] Later she writes: "I have had a long talk with sister to-day about Leighton. She claims him, as all the Perfectionists do, as one of their number; though, by the way, in the common acceptation of the word, she is not a Perfectionist herself, but only on the boundary-line of the enchanted ground. I am completely puzzled when I think on such subjects.

I doubt if sister is right, yet know not where she is wrong. She does not obtrude her peculiar opinions on any one, and I began the conversation this afternoon myself."

[3] "Oh, what a blessed thing it is to lose one's will! Since I have lost my will I have found happiness. There can be no such thing as disappointment to me, for I have no desires but that G.o.d's will may be accomplished." "Christians might avoid much trouble if they would only believe what they profess, viz.: that G.o.d is able to make them happy without anything but Himself. They imagine that if such a dear friend were to die, or such and such blessings to be removed, they should be miserable; whereas G.o.d can make them a thousand times happier without them. To mention my own case: G.o.d has been depriving me of one blessing after another; but as every one was removed, He has come in and filled up its place; and now, when I am a cripple and not able to move, I am happier than ever I was in my life before or ever expected to be; and if I had believed this twenty years ago, I might have been spared much anxiety."

[4] The Right Rev. John Johns, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia, was a man of apostolic simplicity and zeal, and universally beloved. An almost ideal friends.h.i.+p existed between him and Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. _Dear, blessed, old John,_ Dr. H. called him when he was seventy-nine years old. See Life of Dr. Hodge, pp. 564-569.

Bishop Johns died in 1876.

[5] Das Blumlein Wunderschon. _Lied des gefangenen Grafen_, is the t.i.tle of the poem. Goethe's Samtliche Werke. Vol. I., p. 151.

[6] See appendix A, p. 533.

[7] The horrible operation is over, Heaven be praised! It was far more horrible than we had antic.i.p.ated. They were _an hour and a quarter_, before all was done. I was very brave at first and wouldn't leave the room, but I found myself so faint that I feared falling and had to go.

Lizzy behaved like a heroine indeed, so that even the doctors admired her fort.i.tude. She never spoke, but was deadly faint, so that they were obliged to lay her down that the dreadful wound might bleed; then there was an artery to be taken up and tied; then six st.i.tches to be taken with a great big needle. Most providentially dear Julia Willis came in about ten minutes before the doctors and though she was greatly distressed, she never faints, and staid till Lizzy was laid in bed....

She was just like a marble statue, but even more beautiful, while the blood stained her shoulders and bosom. You couldn't have looked on such suffering without fainting, man that you are.--_From a letter of Mrs.

Payson, dated Boston, Sept. 2, 1844._

[8] Her friend, Miss Prentiss, had been married, in the previous autumn, to the Rev. Jonathan F. Stearns, of Newburyport.

[9] "Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure" is the full t.i.tle of the famous little work first named. It appeared in January, 1697. If measured by the storm it raised in France and at Rome, or by the attention it attracted throughout Europe, its publication may be said to have been one of the most important theological events of that day. The eloquence of Bossuet and the power of Louis XIV. were together exerted to the utmost in order to brand its ill.u.s.trious author as a heretical Quietist; and, through their almost frantic efforts, it was at last condemned in a papal brief. But, for all that, the little work is full of the n.o.blest Christian sentiments. It pushes the doctrine of pure love, perhaps, to a perilous extreme, but still an extreme that leans to the side of the highest virtue. After its condemnation the Pope, Innocent XII., wrote to the French prelates, who had been most prominent in denouncing Fenelon: _Peccavit excessu amoris divini, sed vos peccastis defectu amoris proximi_--i.e., "He has erred by too much love of G.o.d, but ye have erred by too little love of your neighbor."

CHAPTER IV.

THE YOUNG WIFE AND MOTHER.

1845-1850.

I.

Marriage and Settlement in New Bedford. Reminiscences. Letters. Birth of her First Child. Death of her Sister-in-Law. Letters.

On the 16th of April, 1845, Miss Payson was married to the Rev. George Lewis Prentiss, then just ordained as pastor of the South Trinitarian church in New Bedford, Ma.s.s. Here she pa.s.sed the next five and a half years; years rendered memorable by precious friends.h.i.+ps formed in them, by the birth of two of her children, by the death of her mother, and by other deep joys and sorrows. New Bedford was then known, the world over, as the most important centre of the whale-fishery. In quest of the leviathans of the deep its s.h.i.+ps traversed all seas, from the tumbling icebergs of the Arctic Ocean to the Southern Pacific. But it was also known nearer home for the fine social qualities of its people. Many of the original settlers of the town were Quakers, and its character had been largely shaped by their friendly influence. Husbands and wives, whether young or old, called each other everywhere by their Christian names, and a charming simplicity marked the daily intercourse of life.

Into this attractive society Mrs. Prentiss was at once welcomed. The Arnold family in particular--a family representing alike the friendly spirit, the refinement and taste, the wealth, and the generous hospitality of the place--here deserve mention. Their kindness was unwearied; flowers and fruit came often from their splendid garden and greenhouses; and, in various other ways, they contributed from the moment of her coming to render New Bedford a pleasant home to her.

But it was in her husband's parish that she found her chief interest and joy. His people at first welcomed her in the warmest manner on her sainted father's account, but they soon learned to love her for her own sake. She early began to manifest among them that wonderful sympathy, which made her presence like suns.h.i.+ne in sick rooms and in the house of mourning, and, in later years, endeared her through her writings to so many hearts. While her natural shyness and reserve caused her to shrink from everything like publicity, and even from that leaders.h.i.+p in the more private activities of the church which properly belonged to her s.e.x and station, any kind of trouble instantly aroused and called into play all her energies. The sickness and death of little children wrought upon her with singular power; and, in ministering aid and comfort to bereaved mothers, she seemed like one specially anointed of the Lord for this gentle office. Now, after the lapse of more than a third of a century, there are those in New Bedford and its vicinity who bless her memory, as they recall scenes of sharp affliction cheered by her presence and her loving sympathy.

The following reminiscences by one of her New Bedford friends, written not long after her death, belong here:

Oh, that I had the pen of a ready writer! How gladly would I depict her just as she came to New Bedford, a youthful bride and our pastor's wife, more than a third of a century ago! My remembrances of her are still fresh and delightful; but they have been for so many years _silent_ memories that I feel quite unable fully to express them. And yet I will try to give you a few simple details. Several things strike me as I recall her in those days. Our early experiences in the struggle of life had been somewhat similar and this drew us near to each other. She was naturally very shy and in the presence of strangers, or of uncongenial persons, her reserve was almost painful; but with her friends--especially those of her own s.e.x--all this vanished and she was full of animated talk. Her conversation abounded in bright, pointed sayings, in fine little touches of humor, in amusing anecdotes and incidents of her own experience, which she related with astonis.h.i.+ng ease and fluency, sometimes also in downright girlish fun and drollery; and all was rendered doubly attractive by her low, sweet woman's voice and her merry, fitful laugh. Yet these things were but the sparkle of a very deep and serious nature. Even then her religious character was to me wonderful. She seemed always to know just what was prompting her, whether, nature or grace; and her perception of the workings of the two principles was like an instinct. While I, though cheris.h.i.+ng a Christian hope, was still struggling in bondage under the law, she appeared to enjoy to the full the glorious liberty of the children of G.o.d. And when I would say to her that I was constantly doing that which I ought not and leaving undone so much that I ought to do, she would try to comfort me and to encourage me to exercise more faith by responding, "Oh, you don't know what a great sinner I am; but Christ's love is greater still." There was a helpful, a.s.suring, suns.h.i.+ny influence about her piety which I have rarely seen or felt in any other human being. And almost daily, during all the years of separation, I have been conscious of this influence in my own life.

I remember her as very retiring in company, even among our own people.

But if there were children present, she would gather them about her and hold them spell-bound by her talk. Oh, she was a marvellous storyteller!

How often have I seen her in the midst of a little group, who, all eyes and ears, gazed into her face and eagerly swallowed every word, while she, intent on amusing them, seemed quite unconscious that anybody else was in the room. Mr. H---- used to say, "How I envy those children and wish I were one of them!"